Elliot C. Williams
If you’ve ever wanted to drink alcoholic beverages out of gold-colored goblets, shoot your shot on blind dates in a “pod,” and search for love in front of millions of strangers, Netflix wants to know who you are.
The streaming company’s hit reality dating show, Love is Blind, is not only releasing its third season this October, but the show’s producers are already looking for singles to join its fourth and fifth seasons.
The show’s producers are looking for “single men and women who are brave, open-minded, and ready for a committed relationship,” according to a casting call posted on Instagram by someone named Mary Myers, who identified herself as a casting producer for the show. In her post, Myers writes that Netflix is looking for single adults from four cities: Charlotte, Detroit, Tampa, and D.C.
One of the seasons may also be filmed in D.C., Myers told DCist/WAMU via Instagram DM. Each previous season featured people living in the same metropolitan area — Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas. (It’s possible the fourth season was already shot in Seattle, according to a local blog.)
Love is Blind bills itself as an experiment to see if love is truly blind and invites its participants to “take a chance on love,” as hosts Vanessa and Nick Lachey offer soothing aphorisms on risk taking and whatnot. In each season, 15 singles date each other from behind walls in their individual pods; and if all goes according to plan, they’re expected to propose, sight unseen. They finally get to meet the love of their life in a big reveal and then date each other in the real world for a few weeks before their eventual wedding.
Viewers and critics have been swift to point out the show’s toxic traits and shallowness. The Guardian’s TV critic Lucy Managan called the show the “final nail in the coffin” of civilization — but admitted to its addictive qualities. Clearly, watching other peoples’ drama is helping many of us get through the pandemic.
The show’s reputation isn’t helped by its lack of body diversity — and its hosts’ bizarre justification for it — or the fact that just two of the featured couples from the entire series are still together, per this surprisingly thorough chart on Wikipedia. The show also highlights few, if any, LGBTQ+ couples. Only one contestant, Carlton from season one, revealed that he was bisexual, which resulted in a major dustup with the woman he proposed to — cue the classic reality TV tropes of cursing, drinks flying through the air, and an engagement ring tossed in the pool.
Regardless, Love is Blind shot to the top of Netflix’s viewer charts during the pandemic, drawing in viewers from 30 million households in its first season alone. Netflix has produced adaptations in Brazil and Japan, released After the Altar episodes and reunions, and has generally doubled down on the reality dating show genre, due, in part, to Love is Blind‘s success.
Join the show, and there’s no telling whether you’ll end up a power couple with millions of adoring fans on social media, like the Hamiltons from season one, or a possible werewolf like Shayne from season two, who’s constantly caught up in show-related drama.
Anyway, here’s the application, which features questions like, “What has been missing emotionally from previous relationships that you hope to find through this experience?” and “Why are you a catch?”
Good luck.
